Q1: What was the disaster? When was it? Where was it?
It all began on the 21st of April 1956, when a young girl at the age of 5 was brought and examined at Chisso Corporation’s factory hospital, In Minamata, Japan. The 5 year old girl had symptoms like a difficulty of walking and a difficulty of speaking that had shocked the physicians that examined her. 2 days had passed and her younger sister was brought to hospital with the same symptoms. Their mother then told the doctor that her neighbour’s daughter was experiencing the same thing. After an investigation of the whole block 8 other patients were discovered and brought to hospital. On May the 1st the director, of the hospital, reported that a disease in the central nervous system was discovered. At the end of May, 1956, the city’s government and some medical practitioners got together and formed a committee to investigate the disease. It was then said that the disease was contagious, so many patients had their houses disinfected and they were isolated as a precaution. The committee discovered that cats and other animals had a strange behavior around the homes of patients. From the year 1950 and the years following cats have had seizures making them go mad and die. Many locals call the seizures effecting cats the “cat dancing disease” as it is from their movements. Cats are not the only ones affected by this disease, crows have also been affected as they have been falling from the sky, fish have floated up to the surface of water dead and on the sea bed seaweed has not been growing. Researchers from Kumamoto University had been invited to help the committee research on the disease.
Minamata Disaster
Q1: What was the disaster? When was it? Where was it?
It all began on the 21st of April 1956, when a young girl at the age of 5 was brought and examined at Chisso Corporation’s factory hospital, In Minamata, Japan. The 5 year old girl had symptoms like a difficulty of walking and a difficulty of speaking that had shocked the physicians that examined her. 2 days had passed and her younger sister was brought to hospital with the same symptoms. Their mother then told the doctor that her neighbour’s daughter was experiencing the same thing. After an investigation of the whole block 8 other patients were discovered and brought to hospital. On May the 1st the director, of the hospital, reported that a disease in the central nervous system was discovered. At the end of May, 1956, the city’s government and some medical practitioners got together and formed a committee to investigate the disease. It was then said that the disease was contagious, so many patients had their houses disinfected and they were isolated as a precaution. The committee discovered that cats and other animals had a strange behavior around the homes of patients. From the year 1950 and the years following cats have had seizures making them go mad and die. Many locals call the seizures effecting cats the “cat dancing disease” as it is from their movements. Cats are not the only ones affected by this disease, crows have also been affected as they have been falling from the sky, fish have floated up to the surface of water dead and on the sea bed seaweed has not been growing. Researchers from Kumamoto University had been invited to help the committee research on the disease.